


nuestra canción no deje de latir

by pyotr



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: Bad Spanish, Drabble Collection, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-03-02 18:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 41
Words: 14,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13324281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyotr/pseuds/pyotr
Summary: he knew when he was fifteen, when he had first looked at héctor and the world had exploded in a riot of color, that he wasn’t meant to live a happy life.ch 41: soulmate au





	1. 1/8/18

**Author's Note:**

> obligatory i'm white and don't speak spanish. this is a collection of unrelated drabbles originally posted to tumblr and i'm going to try to stay true to the spirit of the movie by including snippets of spanish in dialogue, but probably less than other fics. please correct me if i'm wrong!
> 
> title is taken from the version of "remember me" performed by miguel and natalia lafourcade, but i uh... cut it up a bit so i may have messed it up, sorry!
> 
> catch me on tumblr at harrygodsirs!

there were other suitors, in the years after héctor left.

they were each perfectly charming, of course, all neatly slicked hair and handsome smiles. they tried to woo her with flowers and pretty words, poems and songs recited beneath her window as if they were straight from some cheap romance; often, she threw what was nearest at hand.

imelda didn’t want to be a wife, not again. she already knew what it was like.

“you’re still young,  _mija_ ,” her mother says to her one night as they set the table. coco gives a shriek of laughter from the other room, followed by oscar and felipe. “and beautiful. you could make another man very happy, and coco deserves a father,  _no?”_

and, oh, her temper rears its head, as volatile as it had ever been, burning in her chest. imelda sets the last plate down harder than necessary and ignores the look of warning that her mother gives her. she didn’t  _need_ a husband to make her happy or to keep her comfortable; she and coco would be just fine on their own.

“coco  _had_ a father,” imelda says hotly, but she crosses her arms tightly, holding on as if to keep herself from shattering, “and he left us, that  _pendejo,_ that useless, no-good  _músico_ —”

“imelda!” her mother scolds, dismayed by her coarse language, and swats at her with the dishcloth she’d had slung over her shoulder. there was no force behind it, though, and imelda doesn’t bother trying to duck away; the sting was almost nonexistent. “héctor may have wronged you, but you know he left with only the best of intentions —”

“but he still left!” imelda all but snarls abruptly, and the two women are left looking at each other in silence, both surprised at the outburst. but imelda just straightens her back and presses her lips into a thin line, her hands folded neatly and formally at her waist.

 _“perdón, mamá,”_  she says stiffly, “but it’s been a long day, and i think it’s time to put coco to bed. i’ll see you on sunday, after mass.”


	2. 1/8/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> starcallerstag asked:
> 
> writing prompts for mal! if you want something war and peace, perhaps something about nikolai obsessing over the tsar. or if you want coco, what is hectors alebrije and how does he find it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of the prompted fics! the bird is a white-throated magpie-jay, i haven't decided on a name for her yet.

she had come to him in the deepest reaches of hopelessness, not long after his death. the first year had come and gone: he had not been allowed home to see his family for  _día de los muertos_ , and the thought of imelda being so cross with him so as not to put his photo on the  _ofrenda_  made him ache.

could she really be so angry, to want for forget him so completely?

he just wanted to go home. the forgotten dead were tight-knit, a family of their own that had welcomed him into the fold, and shantytown was charming, but it wasn’t santa cecilia, wasn’t the modest little house where he and imelda and little coco had lived before he left with ernesto to the city.

he still sang to himself, every night before he slept. he hummed the little melody to himself and imagined coco doing the same, and sat there on his knees as if in prayer, listening as the tune faded into the bustle of shantytown after dark.

but it was different, that night.

instead of being left in the lonely stillness, listening to the creak of his bones and the rickety floorboards, someone whistled back a few notes of his song. he looks up, sharply; the window was open (perpetually, there was no glass) and on the sill sat a bird, an alebrije,painted in vibrant shades of pink and yellow and orange, her keen gold eyes watching him closely.

he had seen other alebrijeout and about, following after their charges; she must have gotten lost, then, to end up so deep in shanty town. alebrije were often contentious to those with whom they had no connection, but he holds his hand out anyway, in invitation.

the bird spreads her wings and flutters over, perching herself with her little talons curled around his ulna.

“oh, look at you,” he says, voice pitched low and sweet, so as not to scare her away, “pretty bird. where are you from, hm?”

she chirps in response, echoing those last notes again, and he feels a little less lonely. he smiles- something small, a bit sad, but a start- and gently runs a finger over the bird’s little head; she seems to preen at the attention.

“i’m héctor,” he tells her, and she looks at him like she understands. “you’re mine, aren’t you? my alebrije. my guide.”


	3. 1/10/18

he held her tight and close and she settled against him, small and warm, breathing slow and deep against his throat. the thought of missing this- of not being able to do this, every night- gnawed at him; the thought of not being able to watch his coco grow up made him ache.

 _only a year,_ he reminded himself resolutely, combing his fingers through her loose hair.  _i will try to come back after a year._

he lifts her into bed and carefully tucks the blankets around her, smoothing his thumb over her cheek and leaning in to kiss her forehead. she looked so sweet like this, her face slackened in sleep; she’d be older the next time he saw her, a part of him resented the idea of the world changing his little girl.

“héctor.” imelda is standing in the doorway haloed by light, her arms crossed over her chest as she watches them. he cannot see her face but her shoulders are pulled taught, her stance stiff and tense. “you are still leaving us?”

“it’s not forever,” he says, the words worn in the way of a mantra, as if he’d said them over and over again. “i’ll be back,  _cariña_ , and i’ll be rich- i’ll be famous.”

instead of replying imelda straightens and turns on her heel, marching away from the doorway. héctor follows, closing the door to coco’s room gently behind him; little socorro had always been a light sleeper. 

“i don’t care if you’re rich, or famous,” imelda was saying the kitchen, her back turned towards him. her temper had always burned hot and the heat was already in her voice, twisted around her words; he’d been the recipient of her wrath many times but not like this, not for something serious. “i do not want someone rich and famous. i want my husband- i want our daughter to have a father.”

and, oh, that hurt his heart, something in his chest seizing up and clenching hard. he fumbles for a moment in the face of her anger- it was as close as he had ever heard imelda come to begging, prideful creature. arguing would be pushing his luck- no one ever argued with imelda- but what if she saw reason this time? what if this was his last chance to convince her?

“you talk as if i’ll be gone forever! i’ll be back, imelda. i’ll only be gone a year, at most.”

he reaches out to her but she slips away, something like steel in her expression when she turns to face him. héctor would have thought her simply furious, had he not seen the puffiness around her eyes, red from crying.

“oh,  _mi amada_ ,” he says, heartbroken.

“don’t,” imelda all but snarls at him, taking another step back like a wounded animal looking for escape. “don’t do that. you do not get to leave us,  _cabrón_ , and be upset when i am angry with you.”

“imelda-”

“go, if you are going,” she says to him, jaw set, chin lifted. her tone is sharp and distant. “but know that if you walk through that door, i will not let you come back.”


	4. 1/10/18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> intended as slight one-sided ernesto/héctor, but it doesn't have to be read that way.

once they had both been lost little boys with scraped up knees and hollow faces, hands clutched in the shadow of the church.

that was where they met, the church. ernesto had been left as a baby no more than a few weeks old; héctor had come later, just shy of his eleventh birthday, his father recently killed in _la revolución_  and his mother dead from fever some years before.

ernesto was four years older, and héctor just a skinny slip of a thing, but neither boy was bothered. santa cecilia was a small town; they were the only children in the sisters’ care, and they clung to each other like burrs. 

but they grew up, and apart eventually. ernesto was charismatic, and handsome, but héctor was bold. all that ernesto had was his reputation- his silver tongue and his lovely voice, the way he could make all the pretty girls swoon- but héctor seemed to care little for what people thought of him, and he threw himself into everything he did with more passion than ernesto had ever seen in his whole life. 

héctor was a part of him, not his brother but something near enough, or closer. and it hurt, strangely, to watch him drift off and fall in love; jealousy, dark and cloying, twisted at ernesto’s insides as he watched héctor’s moonstruck look, his throat tightening at the other man’s enamored sighs.

but héctor chose him, in the end, and ernesto couldn’t deny the uncomfortble sense of satisfaction he got from that. married or no, héctor had been his before he had ever been imelda’s.

she looks at him sharply, though, as if she could see through his charming facade, her expression unimpressed and her full lips turned down into what seemed to be a perpetual frown. he could hear a tune from the other room, something sweet and sad- héctor, singing his goodbyes to his daughter.

“you take care of him, cabrón,” imelda tells him, harsh, restrained as if she toed the line of hostility. she had never liked him, after all, for all of  héctor’s affection. “i want him to come home to us.”

“of course.” something cold curls in his stomach and ernesto smiles mirthlessly, something ugly. he didn’t much care for what imelda wanted. “i love him like a brother, after all. you’ve nothing to fear,  _señora._ ”


	5. 1/11/18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this actually portrays ernesto as a better person than i think he is but uh

despite everything else, ernesto had never meant to be a murderer.

as a child he had dreamed of greatness, hungry for more than the church could give him, for more than santa cecilia could give him. he wanted adoration, wanted to be better than some nameless, parentless boy.

héctor could give him that.

héctor, who was so full of love for the world, who breathed music like air. héctor, who followed at his heels and always seemed to see the best in people. everyone else came and went- an ever changing sea of faces and voices and names- but héctor had always been his one constant. his anchor. 

but héctor’s devotion to his dream- to  _their_ dream- wavered. he spoke of his wife and his daughter more and more, melancholy writ clear across his expressive face, and something in ernesto’s lungs ached every time. but ernesto bit his tongue and smiled and reminded héctor of the music that they made together, and didn’t let the hurt come until later.

he buys the wood varnish with a steady voice and manages some small talk with the man at the hardware store, laughing a little and making some asinine joke, parting amicably. he didn’t plan on seeing him again.

“you’re sure about this,  _amigo_?” ernesto asks héctor later that night, but he’s already turned around to pour out the drinks, measuring the cheap tequila out into the shot glasses. héctor was still talking- he slips some of the varnish into one of the glasses.

“i just have to see them, ernesto,” héctor was saying, a little sad but a little hopeful, too, and it hurt like a punch to the gut, the thought that he would want to  _leave._ “it’s been so long, you know? coco must have gotten so big by now, i wouldn’t forgive myself if i didn’t go back soon.”

“a drink, then,” ernesto offers, holding out the shot that he had cut with varnish. héctor takes it with a sweet smile, so very trusting. “to say goodbye.”

“to say goodbye,” héctor echoes, and they clink their glasses together before throwing back the shots, simultaneously. the cheap alcohol burned badly; ernesto couldn’t help the grimace that pulled at his mouth, and he heard héctor cough.

they laugh, then, and ernesto helps héctor pack his things as they whittle away the hours until the next train. ernesto’s heart beats a sharp, staccato rhythm against his ribs; héctor’s color drains, and he presses his hand flat against his stomach, but neither of them mention it.

héctor doesn’t let himself show pain until they are on the way to the train station, though ernesto had noticed far earlier. he gives a sharp gasp and doubles over, arms wrapped ‘round himself, and something tight and nervous loosens its grip around ernesto’s throat.

he presses his hand to héctor’s back and doesn’t have to feign his concern at the wet gagging noise that hector makes, or the way he spits blood on to the cobbled street.

“hey,  _hermano,”_ ernesto says, rubbing comforting circles between  héctor’s shoulders, “let’s get you back to the hotel room. you can’t go like this, you’ll see your  _familia_  later.”

héctor was dead a day and a half later, pallid and waxy in death. looking at him- at what used to be him- shook ernesto to the core, made him feel ill. he hadn’t  _meant_ to kill héctor; he only wanted to make him a little sick, keep him from leaving, give him time to see that going home wasn’t the right choice.

but here they were, and here he was, and héctor was dead. 


	6. 1/12/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> Writing prompt: Coco POV on her reunion with her parents?

she had known, vaguely, that her father died young; miguelita had come to her with the whole sad story, his voice halting and breaking, hesitant as if he expected her to rebuke him. she hadn’t, of course; she would not have been able to even if she wanted to. 

but she had forgotten her father’s face, forgotten the sound of his voice and the feel of his arms around her. for all of miguel’s pretty words of love and hope, only the barest fleeting traces of héctor remained in her memory.

the family waited for her when she crossed the bridge, all of them clustered together, strange and skeletal in death but still so achingly familiar. julio is there first, his hands pressed to her face, tracing the markings that  _must_ be there now, the barest hint of a tremble in his fingers. and then there is victoria, looking teary and still so serious, and coco laughs a little, drags her down into an embrace. rosita, tio felipe, tio oscar- they were all there to greet her.

mamá was there, too, standing apart, her hands clasped at her waist, her back straight. she looked as regal as she had in life, unflappable and perfectly put together, her dress falling in neat creases. she looked like something out of a painting, something perfect and distant.

beside her, by contrast, was a young man, his bones yellowed and spiderwebbed with hair-thin fractures. he was dressed well enough, shirt buttoned just a few short of his throat and his trouser legs rolled up about his ankles, but his hair was tousled and he seemed nervous.

“coco.” her mother’s voice was warm despite her chilly exterior, and she reaches for coco, pulling her close and pressing an affectionate kiss to her forehead. it was strange; she had never considered her mother youthful but she seemed so now, compared to coco’s own age. “welcome home,  _mija_.”

“mamá,” coco replies, warmly, “i’ve missed you.”

imelda lingers a moment in uncharacteristic sentimentality, her thumb ghosting over the markings on coco’s face in the same way julio had, before she steps aside. there’s still something soft about her though, in the look on her face and the way that she moves, when she reaches for the worn young man.

“socorro,” he says, and then pauses, unsure. his voice was was familiar if not a little rough, achingly so, and coco thinks,  _oh, it’s him._ “coco, i. i’m happy, that you had a happy life. and… i’m sorry, too.”

“oh, papá,” she says, reaching out to pull him into a tight, tight hug, pressing her face against his chest as his arms wind around her shoulders. “there’s nothing to forgive, not a thing.”


	7. 1/19/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> Ernesto mourning and regretting what he did to Hector some time down the line.

it was worth it, in the end.

he says this to himself over and over, when the night is too dark and quiet, laying on his back and staring at the ceiling. he tries to convince himself of it, whenever he looks at his guitar, running his hands over the fine white finish, polished to shining.

it was all worth it.

it was harder to convince himself of that fact on the bad days, on the days he remembered how héctor died, how he had gasped for breath and his his expression had turned wild for a split moment before he collapsed, unconscious, to the cobblestones. how he had lingered for a day or two afterwards, in pain, vomiting and delirious. how ernesto had held héctor’s  hand as he stilled in death.

it was worth it, he tells himself, because he was famous now, he had achieved their  _dream._ the world loved him, loved héctor’s songs, the very songs that héctor had so selfishly wanted to keep to himself.


	8. 1/19/17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Anything involving ernesto after getting exposed as a murderer and song thief in the land of the dead. been thinking about this for a while

the fury comes first, hot and fast-  _how dare they, how dare they take what was his-_ and then the fear, the anxiety, the resignation. it had been only a matter of time, after all, before his sins caught up to him.

ernesto went to ground, after his last sunrise spectacular, though he was still strong and his bones still shone as blinding white as ever. he wasn’t being forgotten, not at all. instead, it seemed that more people in the land of the living knew of him than ever before-

and they knew of him as a murderer.

it made something inside of him ache, though he wasn’t surprised. it was only rational that that boy-  _miguel,_ héctor’s boy, and really, how did he not see it earlier?- should go home and tell everyone of what he had learned. ernesto had expected it, even; it was why ernesto had attempted to keep him from returning in the first place.

still, he hated it. he hated héctor, and his whole family. he was a fraud, a fake; he wasn’t even feared as a murderer, he was  _mocked,_ and perhaps that was what stung most of all.


	9. 1/28/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some fic that is explicitly hector/ernesto. i'll have to change the tags now

he kisses him like a prayer, hands cupping his jaw like he was something precious, and héctor sighs into his mouth with his fingers in ernesto’s hair, clutched tight. against his lips, he says, “we can’t do this anymore.”

 _“¿qué?”_ ernesto is a bit dazed, a bit breathless, but he feels the way that héctor‘s fingers graze his cheek as he pulls away, how the room is colder with the space between them. “what do you mean? héctor?”

he pushes himself up to lean on his elbows- the cheap mattress sags as he shifts his weight- to watch héctor pace the room, smooth down his shirt and tuck it back into his trousers, run a hand through his already tousled hair. he looked near-frantic, his expression pinched, cheeks flushed and mouth kiss-swollen.

“this,” héctor says, gesturing vaguely. “i’m  _married,_ ernesto, and imelda is pregnant, and… and i have to be there, i have to be a father, i can’t keep running off with you to the city and-”

“and fucking men?” ernesto asks dryly, but there’s an ache in his throat, hurt behind the mask. “fucking me?”

something in héctor’s face shifts, like embarrassment at the coarse language. “you know that’s not what i meant. and that’s not what this is.”

he’d known this was coming ever since he first saw héctor mooning over her in the plaza, but ernesto had ignored it, pushed down the jealousy and the fear and pretended that they could carry on like this forever, a world of their own. oh, there had been times where he had wanted to take héctor by the shoulders and shake him, say,  _you can’t have us both,_ but he had always been too afraid of leaving that much up to chance.

and rightfully so, it seemed.

“what is it then? making love?” he asks, a taunting edge to his voice honed sharp. “ _tu no me amas._ ”

“ernesto-”

“don’t,” it comes out as almost a snarl, caught behind his teeth. “go. just- leave.”

héctor had never been pretty when he blushed, embarrassment turning his skin red and blotchy, and this was no different; he stares for a moment, seemingly speechless, before grabbing for his jacket and slamming the door to their shared cheap motel room behind him.


	10. 2/1/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> “ you can’t keep loving people who choose to hurt you ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is actually from my rp blog lol anon had sent in a prompt from a list i reblogged

the words startle a laugh out of him but it is dry and humorless; he throws back the shot and it burns going down, and he sets the glass back to the bar with a solid-sounding  _thunk._ ernesto didn’t typically consider himself much of a drinker, nor one to drink alone, but he supposed that he had earned it for the past few days.

it wasn’t the first time that héctor had backed out of a tour, but it  _was_ the first time he’d left ernesto in the city in favor of going home, regardless of any argument. and they’d had them before, heated discussions and even shouting matches over priorities and family and fame, and even when he won ernesto was left feeling like he’d lost. 

but héctor had left this morning, and ernesto had spent most of the day drowning himself in self-pity before dragging himself with heavy feet to this seedy cantina. the bar was sticky and the alcohol was cheap and the locale was less than desirable, but that was okay- he wouldn’t burn through all of their- no,  _his_ money this way.

he didn’t want to think about it like that, as him loving héctor and being hurt by him. he loved héctor- of course he did, everyone did, it was forgone and he didn’t want to poke too closely at that fact- and he may have been annoyed with him, angry with him, but he wasn’t  _hurt._

the persistent ache between his lungs seemed to say otherwise, though, and he pushes it back down.

“mind your own business,” he says to the stranger who had spoken, and it comes out more rough and broken than the snarl he’d intended, even if his lips twist with it. for good measure, he spits out, “ _cabrón._ ”


	11. 2/2/18

he’s been here for three days and ernesto still hasn’t heard him speak.

all that he knows about the boy are things that  _las monjas_  had said, whispered behind their hands when they thought he was too far away to hear, even though they always told him that gossiping was a sin. his  _mamá_ was gone and his  _papá_ had died fighting in  _la revolución._

he only even knew the boy’s name from when sister concepción told him to fetch him for meals.

they shared a room, though, two stiff cots pushed to opposite walls. ernesto saw him every morning roll out of bed, pillow creases pressed into his cheek, eyes sleepy. he wouldn’t every directly look at anyone- his eyes skated over them as if they weren’t there, and he kept his head down- and the only acknowledgement he ever gave to being addressed was a shallow nod or tiny shake of his head. 

eleven years old and he was a tiny, skinny slip of a thing and ernesto, at fifteen, had simply brushed him off.

“do you ever miss  _tu familia?”_  the words are whispered in the dark one night, barely there, and had he been any closer to sleep ernesto wouldn’t have heard it. as it was, he holds his breath, half-believing it to be some ghost, some restless spirit taunting him in the night.

but no, it was just that boy. héctor.

“i never knew them,” ernesto says, just as soft, a vulnerability only suited for this sort of pitch-blackness. “do you? miss them, i mean.”

“oh,” comes the reply after a pause, and then, sad, “ _sí_ , always.  _lo siento_.”

ernesto doesn’t say anything to that, can’t really think of anything  _to_ say, but he listens to héctor’s breathing drop off into sleep, steady, a bit of a whistle as he breathes out through his nose. in the morning, though, héctor meets his eyes, and even though he doesn’t respond to any of the sisters, he offers ernesto a quiet  _buenos días_ and a tiny smile.


	12. 2/5/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what if miguel didn’t make it back to the land of the living before sunrise :(

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> most of my stuff are freewrites and unedited but this is unpolished to the extreme

the rising sun crests the city’s eclectic skyline, casting everything in the fresh, watery light of early morning, but not a single one of them turn to look. 

instead the entire family is focused on héctor and miguel, the way that miguel’s translucent skin fades away and how golden sparks jump across héctor’s yellowed bones. miguel still gripped tight to héctor’s hand, his big brown eyes bright with tears, and imelda delicately covered her mouth and bowed her head. 

(the dead couldn’t cry, not really. miguel’s tears don’t fall, and imelda’s shoulders don’t shake.)

there’s no final words, no long drawn out speeches; nothing so dramatic as all that. héctor offers a trembling smile to imelda, to miguel, and heaves a sigh. he doesn’t fight it- he’s seen so many fade away, in the century that he lived in shantytown, and knew there was no point- and perhaps that was the cruelest part of it all, that resigned acceptance. 

and then he is gone, flecks of golden dust blown away by some mysterious wind.

there’s pause, then, a moment of silence that weighs down on them all like something solid and tangible. miguel breaks it first with a ragged sob and all but throws himself at imelda, but she catches him, of course she does, folding him into her arms and holding him close, tight as if he were about to leave, too. 

(she didn’t want to think about what it mean that he was still here, that they were too late, the pain that their failure would bring their family. no parent should outlive their child, and there would be no closure for the living riveras- there was nothing left of miguel there, across the bridge.)


	13. 2/7/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i was prompted to write about dante, man's best friend

now that he thought of it, miguel had never really given much thought as to where dante had come from.

he was just  _there_ one day, trailing at miguel’s heels, and miguel himself had been delighted; he’d always wanted a dog, but  _abuelita_ would never allow it, even though she’d let rosa take in a kitten from the litter someone had left in a box down the street.

but dante was there, and he stayed there, and miguel hadn’t questioned it; he was just happy that dante was there, a constant presence. 

it made more sense later. dante looked nearly the same as always- wide-eyed and drooling, his tongue lolling from his doggy grin- but painted in brilliant shades of pink and blue and orange and lime, silly little wings fluttering on his back. an alebrije-  _miguel’s_ alebrije.

and he was there when miguel came back, too, pawing at the locked door to de la cruz’s mausoleum, his whine audible even through the thick stone walls. miguel can’t help the way he laughs- tired, half-hysterical- as he climbs out the window he’d originally entered through, and lets dante cover him in slobbery kisses before they make their way home.


	14. 2/8/18

ernesto always seemed most alive on stage.

héctor would watch him, sometimes, from the corner of his eye or during solo performances, watch the way his shoulders squared and his face lit up, shifting into something viciously alive. there was just something about ernesto that captured audiences, held them rapturous in his wake.

and he’ll look at héctor after a show, still ringing with his last notes, all bright-eyed and teeth bared in a while smile, and say,  _no fue tan divertido? wasn’t that fun?_

héctor would laugh and agree because there was little else he could do when ernesto looked at him like this, like they could do anything they put their minds to, like they could devour the world whole. it made his knees weak; it made all the words he could ever possibly want to say die on the tip of his tongue.

ernesto de la cruz had always been a force of nature, like a thunderstorm or a hurricane, héctor had known this his whole life, but he’d never reached his full potential until he’d been under the spotlight with a guitar in his hand.


	15. 2/12/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> write something about Ernesto's parents, or how Héctor felt when he learned his songs were being used by Ernesto

the notes that cut the air were scratchy and warbling, but distinctly familiar.

there was precisely one gramophone in shantytown, and the music would have been better had it not been so old. every now and then someone would get a hold of new records- a way to stay connected to the living, even when they themselves had no family- and those that could would gather ‘round and listen, as if savoring it.

“who is this?” héctor asks, tapping his foot along to a beat that he knew by heart, something that he’d scribbled down in a tony notebook by dim lamplight, in a motel far away from home. and that voice-

 _that voice_ -

“cruz,” says one of the  _tías_ , squinting at the record cover. “says here… ernesto? ernesto de la cruz?”

and the world feels as if it falls out from beneath his feet, and héctor is eft reeling.

he feels joy, at first, this confirmation that ernesto had  _made it-_ all he had ever wanted was to be famous, after all, and héctor was glad for his friend, immeasurably so. but there was confusion there, too, and hurt; he had taken his songs, why had he taken his songs? ernesto had known how much some of them had meant to him, how they weren’t to be played for an audience. 

“is there a dedication?” he asks, just this side of desperate as he snatches the album cover from the   _tía’s_ hands. ernesto’s face was there, bright and alive and handsome as ever, his mouth pulled into a charmingly indolent smile. on the back there was a tracklist, a copyright date, band credits and background vocals.

he read it, over and over, eyes skipping across the faded words, but it was the same every time. there was no mention of héctor anywhere.


	16. 2/12/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> laylavanhellsing asked:
> 
> No murder au: Hector gets to come back home and Ernesto comes back to Hector and the family

it had near ruined him to watch héctor leave, to watch him turn his back on him.

but he had survived it. ernesto had made himself watch because his love for héctor outweighed the jealousy that gnawed on him from the inside out, because perhaps this was always god’s plan. he had swallowed the hurt and he had survived it.

he wrote letters, sometimes, when he stayed in one place long enough to receive a reply. he eventually snagged a regular gig at a club in one of the nicer parts of the city, crooning songs that other people had written into the smoke-fogged room. and people would applaud at the end of his set every night, and some would buy him drinks, and sometimes he would find himself tumbled into a handsome stranger’s bed in the early hours of the morning.

but the apartment he rented was still empty and dark when he came back for a few hours of sleep. it was still cold, still spartan, and he was still alone. 

letters from santa cecilia came infrequently, and all from héctor. he received one in august, half a decade since seeing héctor last, just after finishing the composition of his second album. it was all empty pleasantries,  _how are yous_ and  _best wishes._ and, scrawled at the bottom of the paper in half-hearted hand, an invitation. 

_come home, ernestito. te extraño._

he hadn’t written a reply.

but he  _had_ packed a suitcase mid-december, agonizing in indecision for days over whether or not he should leave, whether or not he could return to hs childhood. he went, eventually, and it was strange, being in santa cecilia in something that wasn’t threadbare, swathed against the cold in a coat that wasn’t fraying at the edges.

he knocks on the door in front of him- a neat rap with his knuckles,  _tap tap tap-_ and he catches his breath as it swings open, tries not to wince. héctor stands in the entryway haloed by a soft yellow light from inside, and there’s little either of them can do until héctor cracks a smile, small and almost unsure.

“asking posada?” he says, a bit awkwardly, a bit helpless.

“something like that,” ernesto replies. 

héctor drags him into a hug, then, squeezing tight, and ernesto lets out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, pressing his face to héctor’s shoulder as he holds him back. it was strange, how he was still so familiar after so many years apart.

“welcome home,” he hears héctor whisper, and the tenderness is almost enough to make up for all the hurt.


	17. 2/22/18

he didn’t feel as if he belonged in the city itself. he’d always just passed through, on his way to for from shantytown. everything was too bright in the city proper, too jovial; there was always an air of stillness to shantytown, regardless of how many people were there, an ever changing sea of faces. but the same woman was in the plaza day after day selling empanada, the same musicians singing the same songs.

it was too constant, for him.

so he goes to shantytown every now and again. sometimes there are faces that he recognizes, but every time there are fewer and fewer and it gnaws at him. héctor was lucky; they weren’t.

“there’s another one,” one of the  _abuelitas_ tells him in her raspy voice, dealing cards. they were different every time, but there were always three old women crowded around the same small table, playing some indecipherable card game. “he’s holed up in chicharron’s old place,  _primo._ he’s not talking to anyone.”

héctor pops his hip and puts a finger to his mouth, his expression quirking with something almost playful, mischievous, and one of the old women cackles, leaning back in her chair so that it creaks. “well,” héctor says, “someone has got to welcome him to the neighborhood.”

it’s the work of memory to pick his way across the rickety walkways, but now his feet have shoes, bare bones no longer getting caught on rough wood. it’s strange, to look at himself as he had been then and compare to how he was now, and vaguely uncomfortable.

 _“¡oye amigo!”_  he calls, rapping his knuckles against the door of what used to be cheech’s bungalow. “time to come out and meet the family!”

there’s some shuffling from inside, a something that sounded almost like a dog. strange- most of the nearly forgotten that héctor knew just simply didn’t have alebrijes, which seemed like a cruel twist of fate. he hears footsteps, loud on the floorboards, and then a pause just on the other side of the door before it opens.

“héctor?”

before him is ernesto, surprise and dismay and perhaps even just the barest hint of fear on his face before it his hidden away beneath careful blankness. ernesto’s shoulders square from their hunched position, his back straightening as if he had something to prove. his expression was still neutral, but héctor recognized the stubborn set to his jaw.

“ernesto,” he says, sounding slightly breathless, more unsteady than he’d like. “i… oh, i didn’t know you were… here.”

in truth, he hadn’t given much thought to where ernesto might have gone. he hadn’t wanted to think about it.

something on ernesto’s face twists but he turns his back to héctor and leaves the door open as he wanders away, so héctor follows him in. an alebrije scratches at his ankle, a tiny bright-blue chihuahua looking up at him with beady eyes.

“what do you want, héctor?” ernesto still has his back toward him but he sounds tired, defeated. all of cheech’s junk has been cleared out, replaced with modest furniture, and ernesto seems to be bracing himself against the single chair at the tiny dining table. 

héctor feels almost sorry for him, sorry for this man that had killed him once and attempted to do so twice, had tried to kill  _miguel._ he squashes down the pity, but there’s still something unsettling about it; the ernesto that héctor had known was a vain, prideful creature, full of life. not this worn out empty shell of a man.

“i didn’t know it was you,” héctor says again, feebly. “the  _abuelitas_ were, uh, curious.” 

ernesto gives an inelegant snort and reaches for a bottle on the table, uncapping it with vigor and bringing it to his mouth violently. héctor tries not to flinch.

“why are you  _here?”_ ernesto demands, glancing sharply over his shoulder. he looked ragged, his hair loose from its typical slicked-back style. “you came inside. what do you want?”

héctor thinks about it for a moment but the answer is obvious, painfully so, in a way that he doesn’t like to admit. but ernesto, for everything else he was, had always been his friend, had known him better than everyone else.

“i missed you,” he says simply with a little, hopeless shrug. he circles around so he can see ernesto’s face. “you were  _mi mejor amigo_ , ernesto. i loved you, once.”

ernesto seems to go tense all at once, his head bowed, shoulders rounded inwards. héctor wants to reach out to him, to pull him into one of those one-armed hugs that had been so easy for them, once upon a time. but he doesn’t, and instead curls his fingers tight into his vest.

“loved me?” ernesto asks, and his voice cracks halfway through; héctor does flinch, this time. “you  _left_ me, héctor, you were always going to leave me, how could you  _love_ me?”

“you killed me!” is héctor‘s response and all of a sudden the hurt feels fresh again, the betrayal sharp and pressing. ernesto winces, still not looking directly at him. and then, softer, “you killed me. of course i loved you, but i had a family. i couldn’t keep running off with you; i needed to be a father to coco. she deserved that, at least.”

héctor had never been good at being angry; he had always been too nice, too willing to forgive.  _too soft,_ ernesto himself had joked when they were younger. but this… ernesto hadn’t just taken his life, but also imelda’s husband and coco’s father. he hadn’t been able to see coco grow up, hadn’t been able to watch her get married or hold his grandchildren.

and now he was stuck like this, forever.

“i just wanted to see my family,” he says, “and you took everything from me.”

and in that moment he can’t decide who’s more pathetic: ernesto, with his rounded shoulders and dull expression, or himself, shouting down a beaten man for things that happened a century ago. he didn’t know if he wanted ernesto to suffer like he had, those decades- ernesto was the one living in shantytown now, alone without the company of the other nearly forgotten- but that damned compassion twists in him again, almost painful.

“but i have them now,”  héctor says, as if to himself. “you can’t take them from me again.”

“héctor,” ernesto says, and his voice is rough, though decades removed he may have given a cold smile. “i never wanted to take them in the first place.”


	18. 2/25/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> started this when i was very sick and didn't have the motivation to really finish it

he calls it heartbreak when he’s feeling charitable, abandonment when he’s not.

once, héctor had told him that he was the most important person in the world to him. something had swelled in ernesto, then, some sort of childish pride that, at seventeen, he hadn’t thought to squash. héctor had looked at him with bright eyes and a toothy smile and it was  _strange,_ to feel wanted for the first time, warm and sentimental and dangerous.

but héctor had left him.

ernesto closes his eyes and he can still see the stubborn set of héctor’s shoulders, just before he left through the door; he sees héctor’s mouth red with blood as he spat it out on the cobblestones, his big brown eyes wide with pain and surprise. the guilt is barely there, anymore. what he’d done had been  _necessary._

and justified, too, because héctor was going to leave him, because héctor had forfeited any love that ernesto may have held for him, because héctor had broken his heart the moment he turned away.


	19. 3/6/18

she saves all the poems that he gives her and keeps them in a box.

they’re far from polished, messy verses scrawled on napkins, on receipts, on envelopes in scratchy handwriting. luisa treasures them nonetheless; she sits cross-legged on the floor the night before their wedding and reads over every single one at least twice, smiling so hard she feared she may split her face in half. 

enrique wrote more, and more, throughout their marriage until her one shoebox had grown to two and then three. he would recite poems on the fly to her pregnant belly, whispered words tripping off his tongue, and luisa would try her best to remember them for later, adding them to her collection. he stayed up late at night with baby miguel- and later tiny soccorro- cradled in his arms, composing poems instead of humming lullabies. 

he could have been musical. he could have broken away from his family and put his poems to music and changed the world. but enrique was too soft for that; his family was his everything, and he was content being a shoemaker, and luisa was happy that he found joy in his work.

but she still sits down, sometimes, with the box in her lap, humming out a haphazard tune to the cadence of one of enrique’s poems.


	20. 3/6/18

imelda had been his anchor for so long, even when she refused to see him, even when she refused to remember him, that he knew he would always love her.

but he had forgotten what it was like to  _love_ her, to cup her cheek and have her lean into him, to brush out her hair at the end of a long day, to press his hand to the small of her back. to be near to her and not be pushed away.

they were awkward around each other, now, the easy closeness of their early marriage gone as soon as he had walked out the door. he loved her, and he knew that she loved him, too, but they were different people now; a century had slipped away, a century of her anger and bitterness, a century of his growing hopelessness. 

they wounded each other in their own small ways. héctor would quietly hum an idle song as they walked together, just close enough that their fingers brushed, and from the corner of his eye he would see her badly-concealed flinch. in an argument and in the depths of her anger imelda would bring up his abandonment and wield it like a weapon, forgetting sometimes that that separation had been a loss for héctor, too.

they don’t fit together as they once did, both of them broken and bent in new ways, but they were learning to shape themselves around each other’s old hurts.


	21. 3/10/17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> write about ernesto letting hector go to the train station without killing him

he ached with watching him to leave, enough that he nearly shook with it when héctor turned his back, all mingled adrenaline and pain. but he didn’t stop him, didn’t try to reach for him, didn’t try to make him stay.

this had been their dream and héctor was walking away from it, away from him.

and it  _hurt,_ somehow, knowing that he came second. héctor could have his family once they were famous; why couldn’t ernesto have him now? 


	22. 3/10/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> miguitarra asked:
> 
> What is Ernesto's first memory?

he was maybe six years old, sitting on the sun-warmed steps of the church, watching the goings-on of the plaza as he kicked his feet up into the air. that was one of his favorite things to do, when he wasn’t cooped up in some stuffy room with one of the sisters, dutifully tracing his letters over and over again until his fingers cramped around the pencil.

none of the other children would play with him- on one memorable occasion a boy a few years had hurled a hurtful  _your parents didn’t even want you-_ which just meant that he often had to find other ways to occupy himself. he’d learned that sometimes, if he sat still long enough and looked sad enough, some of the ladies passing through would take pity on him and give him a treat or two, usually a piece of  _pan dulce_ or an orange slice.

some days were worse than others, but days like those were the good ones.

these are the moments that he overlooks when he thinks of his childhood- content, his fingers sticky with fruit juice, hot sun high in the sky- and instead focuses on all the bad, on the loneliness, on the sheer feeling of insignificance. 


	23. 3/12/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> laylavanhellsing asked:
> 
> Write about Ernesto accidentally poisoning himself when he tries to kill Hector

dying hurt.

at least, it hurt to die the way he- he  _assumed_ he did. and how  _stupid,_ to die like that, accidental suicide; his hands must have been shaking, or he must have spilled into his own glass. he can still taste the cheap alcohol, the way it had seared across his tongue and burned the back of his throat.

he was nothing but bones now, though. 

his clothes fit strangely, too loose. he tucks his shirt and tightens his belt, tugging uncomfortably at his necktie. that, at least, was still loose, flopping lifelessly against his collarbones; he couldn’t stand the idea of cinching it around his  _spine._ he couldn’t stand the sight of himself in the room’s- cell, really- one wall-mounted mirror, couldn’t bear to look at his hands.

the door opens to reveal one of those strangely sympathetic officers, dressed in a neat blue uniform, skull still somehow managing to impart emotion. he swallows back the revulsion that rises in him at the sight.

“ernesto?” 

he knew that voice. 

the officer steps aside to reveal another skeleton, this one dressed in a red-brown charro suit, cheap satin tie at its-  _his-_ throat. his brown eyes were wide, dark hair falling in messy layers; there were markings etched across his cheekbones in shades of gold and purple, looking almost like wings.

“héctor?”

and then héctor was on him in the blink of an eye, pulling him up into a fierce hug, clinging almost desperately. it takes him a moment but ernesto responds in kind, curling his fingers into héctor’s jacked, hands pressed against the other man’s shoulder blades. it should have been uncomfortable- there were far more sharp angles now, he supposed, the both of them just being bones- but it felt just as it had when they were alive.

“oh, héctor,” he says, but it comes out as a whisper and héctor just squeezes him closer. clinging together like this he can feel the way that héctor trembles  _just so,_ as if he would fall apart at the slightest provocation. they were all the other had, now, and that was almost what he wanted, but not like this. never like this.

ernesto de la cruz was twenty-six years old, and dying hurt.


	24. 3/13/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> Write about Ernesto kissing Hector for the first time!!

when he realized, ernesto was always very careful with the way that he touched héctor. a one-armed hug, a companionable clap on the shoulder, a kiss on the cheek in greeting or goodbye. he was careful not to sit too close, to watch his tongue, to flirt with pretty girls.

(the last man in santa cecilia to love as he did had thrown himself into the river from shame, years before ernesto was born.)

if héctor ever noticed that deliberate bit of distance between them, he never mentioned it. ernesto endured, as he always had, the cramped single bed they shared in cheap motels, the way they were pressed shoulder to knee on the bench in the train, how héctor leaned into him when he’d had too much to drink. 

he had been  _so careful,_ and still they’d ended up here.

they are racing with the adrenaline of performing, the both of them flush with the excitement of it all as they stumble offstage and put away their guitars into their battered cases. drinks are offered and considered- ernesto looks up, sees one man watching from the bar, and offers a sharp grin when he winks- but ultimately turned down.  _we have a train to catch tomorrow morning,_ he murmurs to héctor,  _and i don’t want you puking all over me._

the streets are quiet at this time of night, even the seedy alleys they duck through on their way back to the motel, but they are bumping into each other and laughing too loudly like a pair of drunks regardless. it had been a good night- a good performance, and the money to show for it. enough to tide them over, at least for a little bit, but it wasn’t enough for ernesto. it was never enough.

and he glances over to see héctor looking at him, his smile lopsided and goofy, his dark eyes catching the dim lamplight.

of course ernesto kissed him, then, and it was nothing elegant, hardly even a kiss, really. he leans toward héctor and presses their mouths together, sloppy, one hand curled at the nape of héctor’s neck to draw him forward. he’d kissed a few girls before, and a few men, but héctor was different. he  _meant_ something, and was distressingly unresponsive.

there’s an awkward pause when ernesto retreats, a moment where they just stare at each other. all the joy was drained from héctor’s expression, leaving him looking vaguely confused, a furrow to his brow and his chapped lips still slightly parted. ernesto swallows thickly and could have sworn that his heart was going to thunder straight out of his chest.

“i don’t think,” héctor begins, and then stops, clears his throat. “i don’t think this is a good idea.”

it wasn’t a  _no._ it wasn’t a  _never do that again._ it wasn’t some eruption of disgust, of hatred, a demand for ernesto to leave and never speak to him again. it was  _hope,_ at least to him.

“we’ve never had good ideas,” ernesto says, and kisses him again, properly this time, and héctor kisses back.


	25. 2/14/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> are you still taking prompts? could you write about hector realizing miguel got coco to remember him?

being forgotten was a painful process. with every flash of gold light that overtook him, it felt as if every part of him seized up and shook, muscles that no longer existed cramping viciously. he’d seen it happen, time and time and time again, but he’d never really stopped to think that it would  _hurt._

there are tears running down miguel’s face as he takes the glowing petal, accepting their blessing, and something in héctor aches at the sight, completely separate from the final death; miguel looked  _so much_ like how he remembered coco, even as his expression pinched.

he takes the petal, and then-

he’s gone.

héctor groans as another fit comes on, his bones clattering against the stone floor as he shakes. imelda’s hands are gentle on him, though she doesn’t make a sound; she was strong, stronger than he could hope to be. he musters up a smile for her, wobbly, but finds his gaze drawn to the sunrise instead, the sky painted hazy shades of pink and purple and pale blue.

“imelda,” he says, and his voice is weak but the pain is less, now, “imelda, look-  _el sol._ it’s morning.”

she doesn’t look as he had instructed but something in her expression shifts, moving from despair to something frighteningly akin to hope. she brings his hand to her mouth, kissing his knuckles as her eyes slip closed with relief, her shoulders curling inwards.

“it’s morning,” she agrees, breathless, “it’s morning. he made it home- he  _did it.”_


	26. 3/22/18

he plays pretty songs for them and winks and smiles in the way that he knows will make them swoon, the soft curves of their bodies pressed against him. they offer him sultry smiles, each and every single one of them, and he whispers sweet words into their ears and curls his arm about their waists.

it’s the same, every single time, the face of one woman blending into another and another and another. he doesn’t remember their names, doesn’t care enough to do so. they are each of them empty, simpering shells.

and he goes home and he gets on his knees and he  _prays,_ and he hates the fear that curls between his ribs when he kisses another man in some dirty alley, or how he’s filled with warm contentment when héctor smiles at him, sweet and familiar.


	27. 3/23/17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> writing prompt: the family reunion in the land of the dead once miguel eventually dies?

he had lived a full life, a  _good_ life, full of family and love and music and warmth, but everyone dies some time. miguel supposed he knew this better than most.

as far as dying went, it was peaceful; he was old, after all, and there was nothing to be done for it. he went to sleep one night and when he woke, he was surrounded not by the familiar stucco walls of his bedroom but by the shifting, vibrant colors that he only vaguely remembered from childhood. the intake officer smiles kindly at him, makes a bit of small talk before she gets to the real question, clipboard clutched in her skeletal hands and a pencil tucked in her hair.

“now, i’m sure you’re eager to see your family,” she says, and miguel sits straighter, “name, please?”

“miguel,” he says, and then clears his throat; it’s strange, because for the first time in ages he doesn’t feel that scratchy sensation at the back of his tongue when he speaks. “miguel rivera.”

she pauses, and then says, “ _de los zapateros rivera?_ ”

he nods, bobbing his head once, twice, because while he had always fancied himself a musician he had never wandered far from his family, and he was content playing for those he cared about. as a child he had dreams of grandeur, of escaping santa cecilia and seeing the world, but they had mellowed with age, and he’d learned to be happy with what he had.

the officer smiles at him again and scribbles something else down on her board before standing, gentle setting her hand on his shoulder. “i’ll go contact your family, señor rivera. i’m sure they’ll be happy to see you again.”

he sits in the waiting room- open and airy, filled with tearful and joyous reunions- for maybe half an hour. he can hear then before he can see them, the familiar tones of his father and his abuelita rising above the rest, excited, impatient. even though they are dead his parents look nearly the same as when he last saw them, warm eyes, dark hair streaked with grey (his mother had died in her fifties of a half-expected heart attack and his father had passed some years later, and miguel always believed that it was simply because he couldn’t live without luisa). there are others, too, berto and carmen, abuelito and abuelita, mamá coco. some are faces he doesn’t recognize, family members he never got to meet. 

and there, behind everyone else and holding tight to each other, are mamá imelda and papá héctor.

miguel works his way through his relatives, accepting kisses and too-tight hugs, laughing, feeling the dampness at his eyes. he hadn’t thought that skeletons could cry, but here he is, choked up nonetheless. abuelita peppers him with kisses and mamá and papá keep close to him, a hand on the arm or pressed between his shoulders. he greets relatives he never got to meet, gathers mamá coco in his arms and accepts her cooing.

and then imelda holds him close as if he were still twelve years old and barely as tall as her shoulder, holding him for a long, long time. he looks at  héctor and héctor looks back and it had never really struck him just how  _young_ héctor was until he smiles and cups miguel’s face in both his hands and says, “welcome home,  _chamaco_.”


	28. 8/26/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> Idk if u r still taking prompts but: Au where hector died of natural causes & Ernesto brought him home. When Hector died he took Ernesto’s and Imelda’s hearts with him.

in another life ernesto holds héctor’s hand as he dies, and héctor smiles at him and tells him to take care of his family. ernesto promises, feeling like he can’t breathe, and stays even when héctor’s glassy eyes fall shut, waits for hours until he dies.

(in another life he is not a murderer.)

he returns to santa cecilia, just like he had told himself he would never do. he can’t afford to bring héctor - the body- back with him so he shells out for a pauper’s funeral and a cheap wooden marker and scribbles down directions to the cemetery for later. he does the best he can with what he has, and still none of it feels like enough.

imelda watches him suspiciously, half-hidden behind her door, pretty face pinched into a frown. they had never gotten on well, the two of them, always contentious. even so, he wouldn’t have wished this loss on her, on anyone, if only because he himself could feel the ache of it.

“what do you want?” she asks, waspish. “did héctor send you? where is he?”

and ernesto swallows thickly, now, all of his pretty words and clever phrases gone with the heavy emptiness that had settled in his stomach. he think he would have thrown up, if there were anything left.

instead, he pulls the scrap of paper with directions scrawled across it and with a shaking hand passes it to imelda, says, “héctor’s dead.”

her expression doesn’t change, immediately, stuck in that tight, suspicious glare, before the words seem to sink in. she takes the paper and looks at him one last time, the disdain melting to confusion, to fear. the directions make no sense to her- she has never been to the city, has never left santa cecilia- but apparently his seriousness makes her believe. 

“no,” imelda says, soft, shaking her head. her vise-grip on the door loosens and she opens it fully, staring at him but not  _seeing_ him. there are no tears, not yet. “no, no.”

“imelda,” ernesto begins, and he glances briefly over his shoulder, feels the eyes on his back. he’s been standing on the stoop too long to be anything but an unwanted visitor, and the village’s greatest past time was gossip. “let’s talk about this inside, _doña._ ”

numbly, imelda steps out of the way, allowing him to nudge her inside, and once the door is closed it seems as if the last bit of willpower leaves her and her knees buckle. ernesto catches her, half-carries her the few steps to the kitchen, settles them both at the rickety table tucked into the corner.

they’re both quiet for a long, long time.

he doesn’t like this, watching imelda crumble, her shoulders shaking with tiny sobs. she had always been so strong, so  _obstinate,_ a stalwart rival in their never ending tug-of-war over héctor’s time and affection. seeing her like this felt like something forbidden, something too intimate for the two of them, not a show of weakness but rather a sense of trust that he didn’t feel he deserved.

“why are you here?” she manages after a while, though she doesn’t lift her head from her hands, elbows propped on the table. “you always hated this place. why come back?”

“i promised to tell you what happened,” ernesto admits with an uncomfortable shrug, fudging the truth just a bit. imelda was not a woman to enjoy being taken care of, especially not by the likes of him; this lie would hurt no one. “you deserve that much. he loves-  _loved_ you.”

“and you love him,” she says. he feels sick with it but he agrees, because she deserved that, too. 

“yes.”

“then go.” she stands, and when she looks at him her eyes are red and puffy, cheeks streaked with tears. but she’s stern, strong again, her shoulders straight and her back rigid. “you’ve done your duty. there’s nothing for you. i would… i would like you to leave, now.”

ernesto knows when and where to press his luck, and now was not the time; they were the both of them wrung out and in pain, and when he passes her he touches her arm briefly and she leans into it.

he goes, and he doesn’t come back.


	29. 3/27/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> Prompt: Coco learned her first word from Ernesto(a swear word) and Hector and Imelda are not amused

it could not have been something simple like  _no_ or  _si_ because coco was, first and foremost, her parents’ child, which meant that she would be consistently unpredictable her whole life. héctor was okay with that.

“ _puta!”_ she chirps cheerfully, curling her pudgy fingers into the collar of his shirt, kicking her legs out as toddlers were wont to do.  _“puta!”_

in that moment everything seems to freeze; he can hear ernesto coughing somewhere behind him, and thanks god and christ and all the saints that imelda was out of the house. slowly, slowly, héctor turns to look at his friend.

ernesto himself is turned away, busying himself with the kettle on the stove, but his shoulders are shaking with barely-concealed mirth. coco taps his neck, sticky hand pressed to his throat, and repeats herself.

“you,” héctor says, softly, “taught my daughter to swear.”


	30. 3/30/17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> I have a prompt for you! Ernesto never thought of Hector as a violent person but when someone got a little rough with Ernesto after a show he sees just how far Hector is willing to go to protect him

until héctor had hit his growth spurt, ernesto had always been the bigger of the two of them, taller and broader, more handsome, more  _popular._ he had never needed anyone to protect him, and though he flinched when someone moved too fast (a tiny twitch in his face, something so infinitesimally small that héctor would not have seen it had he not known ernesto so well), he’d always been adept at sweet-talking his way out of trouble. 

but that was in santa cecilia, where ernesto knew everyone and everyone knew ernesto and things were friendly, familiar. the city was different, big and dark and dangerous, but ernesto was arrogant enough to think that he knew how the whole world worked. what may have passed in santa cecilia- because the people there  _knew_ them- wouldn’t fly the same in the seedy bars they played in, and only héctor seemed to realize it.

but ernesto always flirted with pretty girls, winking and flashing smiles from the stage or sidling up close as he strummed his guitar, crooning some verse that héctor had scribbled down at one point or another. and the girls, they always giggled and swooned and blushed under the attention, because that was the effect that ernesto had on people. and, nine times out of ten, an angry man would approach them after the show.

nine times out of ten, ernesto managed to talk his way out of it.

héctor watches as if in slow motion, the man’s fist catching ernesto square in the jaw and stumbling back, off-balance, against the brick wall behind him. others are watching too, jeering, laughing, and something hot and angry twists behind his ribs, something  _furious_.

he is moving before he’s really aware of it but all of a sudden there is a bottle in his right hand and he is  _swinging,_ smashing it across the back of the man’s head and grabbing for ernesto, pulling him through the crowd, out into the street. and they keep running (stumbling, in ernesto’s case) until héctor feels they are far enough away and they are both out of breath.

“you left my guitar,” ernesto complains, breathing hard and rubbing his jaw. there is already a bruise forming there, stark against his skin, and héctor finds he doesn’t much like the reminder.

“it was junk anyway,” he says in return, slouching to the ground as he tries to catch his breath, head leaned back against the wall behind him. “i could have left you there, though. let you get beat up.”

“i  _liked_ that guitar,” ernesto continues as if héctor hadn’t said anything at all.


	31. 3/31/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt time!: Not long after Hector leaves to go home Ernesto gets a Telegraph/call that Hector and Imelda are dead and Coco needs him. He rises to the occasion and returns for His godchild

he grips the telegraph so hard that it nearly tears, the cheap paper crinkling in his grasp, but he doesn’t register it, not immediately. blood rushing in his ears _- héctor is dead, héctor is dead, héctor is dead-_  in time with the beat of his heart. 

ernesto had told himself that he would never return to santa cecilia, that he would never have anything to do with héctor after he walked out that door, but he supposes that that was never quite true. it takes him three different connecting trains to get from the capital to santa cecilia, tickets cheaper with each stop. he makes the journey in a numb sort of haze, clasping his suitcase, unfeelingly handing over pesos.

imelda’s brother answers the door when he knocks- uno de los gemelos, he had seen them both at the wedding but had never spoken- and takes a look over him before stepping aside, seeming so, so tired. ernesto supposed he understood.

“oscar and i would take her,” he starts, fiddling with his sleeve as he leads ernesto to the girl’s room, “but mamá is sick, and neither of us know how to take care of a kid. and we promised imelda that we would take care of the business, too; this is what héctor would have wanted.”

ernesto vaguely remembers the layout of the house, from the few times he’d been here before he and héctor’s falling out. the twin- felipe, this was felipe- knocks on a door and says, kindly, “coco? it’s  _tío_  felipe, there’s a visitor here to see you.”

the door offered no answer, but he reached for the knob anyway, pausing just before swinging the door open. he looks at ernesto for a long, long second. “promise that you won’t take her from santa cecilia.”

ernesto swallows had, because making that promise would mean ruin for his dream, for héctor’s dream, for  _their_ dream. no one ever got famous for staying in this tiny, dusty speck of a town. but was it worth it, for héctor’s daughter?

“i promise,” he says, and felipe opens the door. 

the girl is seated by the window, older than when he had last seen her; seven, maybe eight years old. she doesn’t turn to look at them, doesn’t seem to care. he doesn’t know how long ago exactly her parents died- a week or two, maybe- but he’s not sure what to do with this unsettling empty shell of a girl.

“socorro?” he says, hating the whispered pitch of his voice, and then clears his throat. “do you remember me?”

it takes a moment but she turns away from the window, her profile cast into shadow by the setting sun, not facing him entirely. but it’s something, at least, and eventually she says, “ _tío_  neto.”

“ _si,_ ” he replies, relieved that she at least remembers him, and takes a few steps forwardto join her in the window seat. “do you know why i’m here?”

“you’re going to take me away,” she says, too dull for someone so young, but her teeth dig into her bottom lip and betrays the emotionless mask she’d built up. “aren’t you?”

“no,” ernesto says, soft again, and perhaps this is what heartbreak feels like, the tight, tight pain in his chest. he had hurt when héctor had left, when he had received news that héctor had died, but this was different. there was some tiny spark of fear in her, and he hated it. “no,  _chica._ we’re not going anywhere.”

she looks up at him, then, with big brown eyes that catch the light of the sun, and he feels so very out of his depth. she seems to pause like a held breath, half-angled towards him, half-ready to turn away again. “promise?”

there’s a half second of hesitation before he replies, a flash of  _what are you doing what are you doing,_ before he nods and reaches out for her. “i promise.”


	32. 4/1/2018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> Prompt for Godfather Ernesto au: Since having to raise Coco he sees so much of Hector in her. Some days it brings a smile to his face others it’s like a knife to the heart

in the following weeks ernesto finds himself swept up in the new responsibilities foisted upon him. he makes arrangements for his things to be sent from mexico city, a frustrating series of telegraphs instructing what should be packed up and what should be sold off. he considers using that money to have something nice purchased for coco and shipped with the rest of his belongings, but he wouldn’t even know where to start in finding something she would enjoy.

he’s not her father, after all. he hasn’t seen her in nearly four years.

he doesn’t know coco, but he knew her parents. there’s so much of her mother there, in the stubbornness and the straight line of her shoulders, the door-slamming fits that she was prone to. her uncles were more fit to coax her out, those times, having grown up with imelda and her temper, and ernesto is always sure to make himself scarce.

(he’s unsure how to deal with these vestiges of héctor’s life, a life lived without him in it. these two men were imelda’s brothers, but héctor’s, too, and this was héctor’s daughter, héctor’s home. ernesto feels like an interloper, an intruder, unwanted.)

but there are parts of her father in her, too, in the way that she seems to hum and sway to whatever tune is on her mind, in the sweet smiles that he sometimes catches for a fraction of a second. her feet scuff across the floor when she thinks no one’s looking, her skirt tangling about her calves as she twirls. he sees héctor in her, the scare, lonely little child he had been when they had first met, and something bettersweet twists between his ribs.


	33. 4/5/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Prompt: Ernesto has never been fond of Imelda but he is grateful for the happiness she gives Hector and the godchild she has given him
> 
> entry #3 into godfather!ernesto

coco is just a baby, small and sweet with her roaming, chubby hands and gummy grins. but she is asleep now, swaddled in his arms, her indistinct features- tiny nose, tiny lips, the sparse beginnings of eyebrows- slack in sleep.

she is so, so small and so, so fragile. 

imelda watches him like a hawk from where she is shrugging on her shawl by the door, as if she expected him to drop her or do some sort of acrobatics. it was to be expected; this was, after all, the first time that coco would be left alone with him. imelda was notoriously protective of her family, and ernesto wasn’t a part of that.

“we’ll be back in a few hours,” she tells him brusquely, and he can  _feel_ héctor peering over his shoulder, the heat of him at his back. imelda continues, “she’s been fed and should sleep for a while longer, but if she wakes up, check to see if she needs changed before anything else.”

ernesto gives some vague noise in agreement, too wrapped up in tracing coco’s tiny features with the tip of his finger to listen to imelda’s slightly condescending instructions. héctor laughs, claps him lightly on the shoulder so as to avoid jostling the baby.

“he’ll be a natural at it,” héctor tells his wife, and ernesto glances up only briefly as they leave. “tio ernestito, doesn’t that sound nice? we can pay him back by watching his, someday.”

and imelda snorts, muffled by the closed door and growing distance, says, “unlikely.”


	34. 4/6/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Prompt: after arriving in the Land of the Dead, Ernesto wants to unite with Héctor but every time he gets close, he backs out, terrified that Héctor will figure out about the murder, and will hate him for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments > kudos

ernesto dies in 1942. the first person he looks for is héctor.

it’s hard, at first; he is a celebrity and there are people always asking for his time and it has always been difficult for ernesto to say  _no,_ to put his foot down to these people that seemed to adore him so much. he had dedicated his life to then and now, it seemed, his death as well.

but he took time to search for héctor, too. he had asked every department he could for information but few results turned up, each handed over with some regretful platitude. héctor may have been staying with family, his parents that had died when he was so young- but he hadn’t spoken of them since they were children, and ernesto tossed that idea away long ago.

in the end, there was only one place that héctor could have been living.

he was almost certain of it, eventually, but something had always stopped him, turned his feet away when he roamed so far down. there was something about the way people began to look at him the further he descended, the older and grubbier their clothes became, the more yellowed their bones. he never went so far as to actually enter shantytown itself.

it was because he was a coward, he supposed, wanting héctor so fiercely while simultaneously fearing what the man could do to him. ernesto had carefully built up an illusion around himself, as delicate as eggshells, and though he may not have known it héctor had the pieces to bring everything ernesto had built down about his head. 


	35. 4/14/18

imelda rivera was a woman of habit and tradition.

every morning for as long as she could remember she would wake up and comb out the simple braid she wore to bed and then, with dextrous fingers, weave a ribbon into her hair to match her dress that day and pin it all up. she would splash water on her face and apply her makeup and jewelry and then go to her office to look over finances and orders before the rest of the family awoke. the workshop was quiet in the morning, and dark, smelling like leather and shoe polish; comforting things, familiar things. Shoes had held together most of her life and had followed her into death.

dia de los muertos changed things, though.

now, héctor wakes earlier than everyone else and imelda lays in bed and listens to him leave before dawn. every hour that he is not there is a distracting anxiety, a fear that he'll never come back, but he always returns by lunch and every time imelda lets out a breath she hadn't been aware she was holding. they don't talk often, dancing around each other with stilted words and awkward, aborted gestures; he'll reach out to open a door and she'll take a reflexive and flinching step back, he'll turn and leave a room if she's in the middle of conversation with someone else.

she does not know if she still loves him. he is different from the  héctor she had married: still sweet and affectionate, in his own clumsy way, but there was a hardness to him, a jadedness that hadn’t been there before. there was a gulf of a hundred years between them now, of experiences not shared, of all the hurt feelings that came with abandonment.

and would he want her? she had grown into an old woman without him- he was stuck forever at twenty-one. could he see the young bride he had left behind in her face? she couldn’t even blame him if he couldn’t find it in himself to want her again, what with the wealth of years between them.

imelda had always found herself bound to routine, each action choreographed after another, and she had been comfortable with that. but  héctor had come along and knocked her off balance, leaving her floundering and unsure for the first time in decades.


	36. 4/16/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Prompt: Ernesto sometimes found himself checking hector out and it was happing more and more often

it had started innocently, ernesto marveling at how  _tall_  héctor had gotten, the way he had seemed to shoot up a foot in the length of a summer. he had gone from a skinny boy to a rangy youth, hair sprouting from his chin; his face had lost the roundness of childhood, taking on the beginnings of some awkward sort of handsomeness.

ernesto tries not to think about it.

he can’t help it, though, the way his eyes drift to héctor more and more often, the way his gaze seems to rest there. he glances at héctor on stage and he feels it like a punch to the gut, stumbling only briefly as he drinks in the radiant joy on héctor’s face, the brightness of his eyes. the jealousy he feels when héctor talks about imelda is ugly and cloying.

he goes to confession. it doesn’t help. instead he comes out of the confessional feeling paranoid, ill at ease in his own skin. 

he swallows back the rush of affection he feels glancing over héctor bent over his song book, ignores the tight clench in his gut when héctor leans against him drunk, close enough that his lips nearly brush ernesto’s throat. instead he bites the inside of his cheek and if he curls his fingers tighter into the back of héctor’s shirt, well, no one will notice.

that night and every night after ernesto gets down on his knees next to the cramped bed that they share while touring, and he prays.


	37. 4/16/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> Prompt: I have this headcannon that Miguel looks like hector did as a kid and when Ernesto saw him at his party he thought he was looking at a ghost

the boy looks up at him, coughing, paint running to show the skin beneath, and says, “i’m your great-great-grandson.”

but all ernesto can see is the long lashes and the shape of his eyes, the set of his shoulders as if he were simultaneously looking for a fight and ready to run away. the familiarity of it made his head spin, already planting some seed of doubt inside of him, but the elation- and the  _opportunity_ \- outweighed it all.

later he will not be as surprised as he should have been. he will look at miguel and see another skinny kid from a hundred years ago, who laughs too loudly to be true and has nightmares loud enough to wake him from a dead sleep, and ernesto will be furious. he looks at miguel and he sees a specter of the héctor he had loved as a boy, and when he throws him over the edge he feels as if he is killing them both.


	38. 4/17/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> Prompt time! Hector and Imelda try to invite Ernesto into their relationship but he’s oblivious and finally they spell it out for him

it is imelda that finally gets through to him, after so long of héctor’s subtle hints and awful flirting. he is holding a tiny socorro in his arms and she brings him a cup of coffee, looks him right in the eye and says, “héctor is in love with you.”

ernesto leaves, and neither of them see him again for weeks.

when he reappears again he comes to imelda first, fidgety and uncomfortable, shoulders drawn into a stiff line. she doesn’t comment on ist or on his disappearance- she knows when to push and when to gentle herself, and they take their lunch in silence until the very end.

“did you mean it?” ernesto asks her, a furrow between his brows, the corners of his mouth drawn tight. imelda has only ever seen him loose and easy and confident in himself; this all seems so strange to her, so out of character. “what you said before?”

“why would i lie?” she challenges. she gathers the dishes, deliberately casual, and can feel him watching from the table as she turns her back.  “héctor loves you. it’s easy to see for anyone who cares to look.”

the two of them have never gotten along well. imelda knows why- it’s obvious that ernesto had felt threatened by her, perhaps still does- and his own carefully placed barbs rarely failed to draw her ire. she had always seen ernesto as selfish and careless, but her relationship with héctor had brought a new understanding; he was a deeply insecure individual with few outlets, who just wanted to be seen.

he seemed to her like a neglected child, and she almost pitied him.

“and that doesn’t bother you?” he demands, moving from unsure to combative, falling into an easier role of antagonist. “you don’t care that your husband is in love with someone else? a man?”

imelda doesn’t reply right away because she  _hadn’t_ approved, not at first;  héctor had told her and she had been angry, furious even, and hurt. she didn’t know why he hadn’t told her before, feared that he had only married her to deflect suspicion- feared that she had failed in her duty as his wife.

but that wasn’t true, none of that was true. héctor loved her; but he loved ernesto, too.

it had been difficult for her to come to terms with this, wrestling with the reality she knew and the things she’d been taught, the feeling of her husband’s love and what it meant to be a good wife. but it was there, in the way his hand pressed to the small of her back or the gentle kisses he dragged across her shoulders; héctor’s feelings were telegraphed in every touch, every glance.

(she had come to terms with the fact that he had room in his heart for another. it took more adjusting to accept that he loved a  _man,_ but somehow the fact that it was ernesto made it easier.)

“of course i care,” imelda says, just this side of too sharp. there is something intent in ernesto’s face a determination she’s only seen a few times before. “he’s my husband, and i know you. no one else matters to you, de la cruz. you’ll break his heart because that’s who you are. but he loves you anyway.”


	39. 4/30/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> theflirtmeister asked:
> 
> ernesto dies and hector is waiting for him?

ernesto doesn’t have a family. the people in uniform tell him this-  _department of family reunions,_ he reminds himself tonelessly, echnoing words that he had been told earlier- and he just nods, unsurprised; he had never known his parents or any siblings, and he supposed none of them had bothered to make themselves known enough to be remembered. 

it had made for a lonely life, but he hadn’t expected a lonely  _afterlife,_ as well.

oh, he has his fans, of course, had built a beautiful and flourishing career that had, as far as he knew, touched many hearts and effectively written him into history. there are people waiting for him, for his music and his legacy, but not for  _him._ had he still had flesh, ernesto was sure he would have felt some unpleasant twist deep in his gut.

as it was, there was no one really waiting for him. 

he had  _one_ person waiting for him. 

héctor seems abnormally slim even as a skeleton, rangy, worrying his frayed straw hat in his his hands. he is different, in his tattered clothing and hunched over-shoulders, but he had been all ernesto had for nigh on a decade; he would know héctor anywhere, in life or in death.

ernesto knows that he is older, and sleeker, silver at his temples and painted across his skull an glinting across the embroidering in the fine deep purple charro suit that he must have been buried in. but looking at héctor he felt like a young man again, hopeful and too-cocky.

and héctor... héctor looks at him like he’s just been punched in the gut, winded and wounded, and he sags under the heavy hand that ernesto claps on his shoulder. he sways toward him between one breath and the next.

“oh, ernesto,” héctor says quietly, softly, infinitely warm, “i’m so sorry,  _amigo.”_

and ernesto grins that plastic grin he had given the past fifteen years, empty and charming. “why be sorry, héctor? we all die sometime.”


	40. 5/22/18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part 4 in the godfather ernesto series.

ernesto watches coco as she grows older and older, the way she’d hum and sway to herself while doing chores, her first clumsy steps into romance. he was proud of her, in a way, to see the young woman she had blossomed into under his care.

he watches her grow, and he thinks about her parents.

he wonders what imelda and héctor would have given to be here in his stead, to see their daughter flourish and fall in love. coco was ferociously her own person but a shadow of her mother lurked in the haughty lift to her chin, her father in every note she sung. he had resigned himself to seeing ghosts around every corner.

when she is married, ernesto does not walk coco down the aisle. he sits in the pews beside imelda’s brothers and watches dry-eyed as she leans in to kiss her new husband (julio, his name was julio, ernesto had spoken little to him but had instead stepped aside and let oscar and felipe grill the young man as héctor should have done). he had raised coco, had housed her and provided for her and taken care of her when she was sick, but he wasn’t her father. he had never presumed to be.

but when the newly married pair turn to face the church, both of them bright and radiant and beautiful in their joy, coco’s eyes seek him out first. she breaks away from her husband and they stay there like that for a moment, silent and still in the middle of the cheering and the laughter and the well-wishes, and ernesto is at a loss. he supposed he should have said something about  héctor and imelda, make a comparison to her parents’ own wedding day, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

and then coco’s smile softens a fraction, from ebullient happiness to something more tender, and throws her arms about him in a great hug. ernesto doesn’t hesitate in returning the gesture, pressing his cheek to her ornately pinned up hair and  tucks her against him.

“thank you,” coco says to him, pitched low for his ears early, and ernesto breathes in deep, unsteady. “thank you for being there.”


	41. 7/12/18

he knew when he was fifteen, when he had first looked at héctor and the world had exploded in a riot of color, that he wasn’t meant to live a happy life.

héctor, four years younger and hopelessly skinny, had shown no reaction save a slightly furrowed brow at ernesto’s gobsmacked expression. they had become fast friends because ernesto would rather have scraps of affection than nothing at all, and because héctor was freshly orphaned and so very alone. and they stayed friends, despite the ache deep in ernesto’s chest.

he is not there the day that héctor meets his own soulmate, but he may as well have been for all that héctor talks about it.

héctor goes on and on about the purple ribbon in her hair and the brush of yellow petals against her fingers, the indignant flush that had risen in her cheeks when he spoke to her, all of it with an air of absolute awe. ernesto listened with half an ear, distracted by the way that the sunlight turned héctor’s eyes gold. 

he holds héctor’s hand as he dies, wiping the red, red blood from the corner of his mouth. 


End file.
